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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26217100">Desert Rose</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressOfJam/pseuds/MistressOfJam'>MistressOfJam</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>What Good Is A (love-struck) Fool? [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Darth Vader Needs a Hug, Gen, In which Darth Vader gets a heart attack, Obsessive Behaviour, someone help this sad man</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:28:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,376</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26217100</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressOfJam/pseuds/MistressOfJam</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Darth Vader is very spooked as he finds a young Luke Skywalker in his warpath. Or, alternatively: Vader gains paternal instincts from the Dark Side.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Luke Skywalker &amp; Darth Vader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>What Good Is A (love-struck) Fool? [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2183343</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>180</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Desert Rose</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Anything that <em>may</em> go wrong <strong><em>can</em> </strong>go wrong. <br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Outwardly, Darth Vader composed himself as diplomatically straight as possible. Clad in darkness in every sense of the word, he stood impossibly still despite the havoc bombarding the carrier, his respirator steady and affirming perfection in the storm of the battlefield below them. His expiration was eerily short and timed after the numerous amount of practice, each drawn exhale coaxing out a muffled hiss and a small, detectable wisp of rage. </p><p> </p><p>He stood, but at the same time he loomed; lingered and fixated in strange, wistful shadows as he did all his life, the Force palpable, streaming through his closed fists, a manifesting, molecular shifting saber of his own. It deconstructed and rebuilt itself, and when he clenched his fists even tighter, even while the black leather squeaked, even while he knew the durasteel beneath the poor stretch of skin began to poke into his palm, the flow of the Force slipped like sand from his grasp, slow and inexorable. Silently his grips trembled, barely noticeable as he began to psyche himself up for the upcoming battle. He needed to be truculent and fully enraged. </p><p> </p><p>The swirling, honed energy hummed as he pulled the curtain of the dark side closer, tighter, shrouding and armouring his mind. Although he doubted the presence of any Jedi on the war zone beneath, yet still he called up his mental shields, nailing them into his mind with the same iron fist of a hand he used to command the Imperial Fleet. Unlike the delicately placed barriers taught to him by the Jedi Council, in which all Jedis set up and are elemental to the light side of the Force, Vader's shields came down (or up, for that matter) with a <em>bang </em>like the spiked, iron gate of a fortress, and to fill the cracks of his mind came creeping the curl of thorns, the barb of rocks closely reminiscent to the terrain on Mustafar, and the lava, copper glow of his own pain to seal it. </p><p> </p><p>Oh, it <em>hurt</em>, it really did, but Vader revolved around it.</p><p> </p><p>Vader revolved around pain, and he was jarringly good at it, too. </p><p> </p><p>As the Imperial shuttle folded its wings above the main carrier, the clamour around it gradually increased. The volume of the black, standard E-11 rifle blasters rose, scattered and reluctant; off-beat and scope-less, a storm of poor miss and aims spewing across the air and unintentionally rattling the grey exterior of the Lamda-class shuttle, which descent was stunted by the crossfire from the opposing A280, rebel-equipped artillery rifles.</p><p> </p><p>The carrier's seats around Vader shook, charred, leathered; white flashing in a convex amidst uncertain shadows cast by the swaying lights installed above. A panel of lights swung to the nearest wall and bounced back, the strung of wire cinched onto its laid bulk creaking with a sudden dip, though not snapping yet. Safety straps thumped onto the floor, joining the fluctuating sweeps of shadows and harsh, stark light as the shuttle began to tilt. The entirety of the interior of the carrier quivered, walls shuddering hollowly, and Vader felt the Imperial pilot dither, hands hovered above the shuttle's main control panel. </p><p> </p><p>The Alliance were attempting to stop the shuttle from landing. </p><p> </p><p>"Uhm," the pilot began, turning back at the Sith in his seat while he glanced at the ongoing turmoil below, "Lord Vader, I can't seem to find a suitable place to land due to the blaster fire, but perhaps if we skirt to the far south of the area-"</p><p> </p><p>"No," Vader interrupted, casting his gaze downwards, "That is hardly necessary. You have no need to circle back and waste more time to find a less unpleasant landing spot. Open the door. I shall see to this mutiny myself just as the Emperor had instructed." </p><p> </p><p>"But-" the pilot started, and stopped himself before he became another nameless victim part of Vader's phantom menace status. Even now, as the Imperial stared with drooped eyes and frown at the machine, he felt a harsh, wailing tug on his own heart like fingers pinching a corner sleeve, a portent to rip his soul out of his vessel like the wall of a plasmolysed cell and weave it into the Sith's. A wave of general concern for his own well-being made his skin cold and prickly as he felt an uncanny torrent of the damned, of the fallen rebels and incompetent grays of officers and admirals scream to him from the shadows of the shuttle, indistinguishable from the shrieks erupting outdoors. In that moment, every bit of non and human suffering reached out to the black-red cloaked beacon which was Darth Vader, clambering, spilling and puddling around his boots, vaporized by whatever infectious rage Vader let seeping out into the Force. </p><p> </p><p> "...As you wish, Lord Vader," he returned his gaze to the ship's control panel, jabbing the button which lifted the carrier's door. </p><p> </p><p>A slow (a bit too suspenseful for the pilot's liking), mechanical whir thrummed, accompanied by the crack of merlot, rusty sunlight falling onto the warlord's shoes. The Imperial-brand aircraft hovered several feet above the busy wasteland, and for a second the pilot wondered if his lord could really make the jump. He quickly disposed of that thought - ordinary men surely would not survive the fall without the loss of their limbs, but Lord Vader was, of course, nothing even close to the varying definitions of ordinary. He would not conform to what normalities there are for man for he recognized himself as more machine than man to begin with. </p><p> </p><p><em>I am no man. I am no child. I do not want.</em>  </p><p> </p><p>The monotonous drone of the shuttle filled the space within the carrier, followed by the flooding in the screams of blaster rifles as the ship's door retracted fully, revealing to Vader the landscape underneath. The sudden spark of light temporarily flashed in the red lens of his helmet, but he did not falter - instead, he unclipped his lightsaber, and once the metal was closed around his durasteel hold, he strode out to the platform extending from the carrier, the cleat of his boots heavy on the steel.</p><p> </p><p>If the rebel troopers had been expecting the regular battalion of stormtroopers to shuffle out of the Imperial shuttle, they were certainly in for a surprise. </p><p> </p><p>Vader's respirator cycled <em>once</em>...<em>twice</em>....and on the third, the lightsaber was ignited; a spectral, heart-stopping red protruding from its hilt, humming with a crackling, ethereal heat that was the only warmth Vader had acquainted himself over the years. With a wide strut, Vader stepped off the shuttle's platform and allowed himself to plunge below to the reddened earth, his dense, black cape unfurling briefly before touchdown.</p><p> </p><p>The soil of the planet crunched under his landing. <br/>
<br/>
</p><p><em>“Blue squadron open fire!” </em>A yell rose above the rest of the ferment, and at once the barrage of blaster fire intensified as machine guns mounted on metal dais redirected at him, rattling and clicking with a ferocity only impossible machinations could ever produce. However, Vader began his stride once more, the lightsaber in his right hand deflecting the incoming bolts in a brilliant yet frightening twirl of the brightest red, returning the assault back to the front line of squatting rebels.</p><p> </p><p>Yells erupted around him once more, a rise in their pitch, as well as a spike in their fear. His other hand swung in front of himself, and with a hideous grin he closed his fist, and the dark side of the Force rippling and gravitating towards him in a sudden, vibrating wave. With a low creak the machine gun <em>shrunk, </em>caving and denting into itself before it imploded into a violent air of steel and silver alike, scattering cogs, wires and gears onto the ground around it, stirring up a small, momentary cloud of pebbles and sand. Front line rebels in orange-red pilot jackets froze, some dead from the returned fire, fallen around their comrades like bleeding bits of teeth. Some began to flee while others cautiously back-pedalled, firing intermittently. <br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Vader levelled his gaze with the field — it was an open field moor with the terrain of a hot desert, with sulphur-yellow boulders and rocks jutting unexpectedly from every several inches of land, caverned by an uneven plateau which came up in crooked, yellowed crescents. <em>Good. </em>He would make use of such a terrain (despite his eternal hatred for sand).</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Hold your position! I repeat, hold your position!” <br/>
</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The rate of the blaster fires continued, but a sudden spur of pain stabbing deep into his skin from...somewhere within the intricacies of his suit made him spiral — with a long-drawn hiss of an exhale he hurled his lightsaber into the breaking barracks of men, the ignited blade slicing through any unfortunate individual before it flung back into Vader’s grip, ceasing the gun fire. Within him, the voices in his head lunged into a screaming rage, amplifying his overall pain and connection to the dark side. Around him, however, things happened simultaneously: a boulder burst into a million pieces, dispersed into slabs and rocks, a random wildfire flickered into life, popping and crepitating from the side of a small hustle of trooper supplies, otherwise crayoning everything into black in its path, more horrid, hellish shrieks rang out in the air, followed by a stack of bulky supply craters toppling over. </p><p><br/>
<br/>
<em>KILL THEM! KILL THEM NOW! </em>Within him, a maelstrom of voices, cacophonous and pulled into a single hurricane of screaming  indignation cried out to him once more. He forced himself to breathe, shoving oxygen into his lungs once more, and in his mind’s eye he felt his own focused rage. </p><p> </p><p>Chaos within chaos, a daisy chain of danger, and they were doomed from the start.</p><p> </p><p>Vader wondered faintly in the back of his shielded mind if they would only ever realise that until their very last breath. Such things were repeating history with him deployed into the war regardless of its scale, for the Emperor had sent in an apathetic killing machine, not a soldier. Vader was the entire Imperial calvary, representing nothing short nor less of the Empire’s pride: loyal, ruthless and disciplined, and armed with a deadly, endless thirst for destruction. He would laugh at the notion that a bit of him remained human beneath the durasteel prison they called his suit (his <em>life-support</em>, for that matter), but oxygen was forced into his charred lungs, thus hurting him further in throbs of agony if he ever tried to even chuckle. Not that..not that it really mattered in the end, honestly. </p><p><br/>
<br/>
The Emperor had made him acknowledge that Vader’s own wants do not matter. </p><p> </p><p><em>I am no man. I am no child. I do not want. </em>It was a line he had once read from an ancient scripture listed in the Jedi Temple, and it stuck with him since forever, and even more so repeated in a mantra now in his mind. There was something far more integral to the phrase that made its meaning complete, but for whatever reason Vader could no longer recall the rest of the written context. Regardless, he stopped himself from acting on automatum and shut his mind, refocusing on the battlefield. The dark side sang its soprano now, and the Force buzzed, heavy and poisoned with the Sith’s leaking fury. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>He realised he had lost everything - his fury is great, and the universe will soon feel his wrath. <br/>
</em>
</p><p> </p><p><em>“Aaagh!” </em>A rebel pilot who had attempted to set up another heavy artillery gun let out a raw, savage scream as Vader pulled him towards his choke-hold, plunging the tip of his lightsaber into his chest before letting his corpse slump onto the ground. Still surging forward, the warlord reached out his free hand again and <em>grasped</em>, clamping down through the flow of the Force and withdrew when he successfully detonated several X-wings parked idle behind the fleeting, panicked lot of rebels, feeling impossibly content as they froze, hands stuck in front of them as though they were broken. The explosion swelled in a nidorous plume of dotting grey and red, temporarily lighting up the flaxen skies with an unnatural clash of a shade of faint, faded crimson. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>“Red squadron, fall back! Evacuate to base!”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>”Sir, what about the pilots?”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>”Tell them to reroute to the aether! We'll meet back at the rendezvous!”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Reroute? Rendezvous? Such nonsense. </p><p> </p><p>“You are all going to die here,” Vader seethed, his respirator loud in the open moor as the scream of blaster fire had died down as the formation of the rebels broke off in the previous moment of being overwhelmed, “However, it is not too late to surrender yet. Should you surrender now and cease this futile insurrection, you will be guaranteed a more...<em>pleasant</em> outcome.”</p><p> </p><p>Most rebellions sparking in the Outer Rim were usually seen of no use nor were they ever seen as anything too major to the Empire, but the fact that Vader was here meant that the mutiny was of some considerable threat to the Emperor himself. However, Vader wondered what could possibly be of significance to even pose as a threat to his Empire, for the Force sang to him it was not these ordinary men that he was seeking. </p><p> </p><p>”You’re proposing to us an ultimatum,” a rebel pilot stated, glancing back to his teammates, but it was sounded as a question.</p><p> </p><p>”Yes,” the machine-man affirmed, “<em>Surrender </em>is your best option.” The lightsaber hummed in his hand, a rumble of an unspoken warning to the rash and foolish. The remaining rebels stood and glanced at each other with frowns and grimaces, some shaking their heads in disapproval while a handful scratched their heads. To Vader, it was almost comical in its own way had it not been his own rising impatience fogging his senses. <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>The pilots daren’t glance nor gaze at him. No one eyed Vader down except for the Emperor. To gaze into the death mask of the machine-Sith was the equivalent of losing one’s self in the gaze of death itself. Darth Vader was death, and he merely stood there, breathing down at them, still as a statue in a field of the fallen and the bleeding dead, his space-black cape rising and falling like waves in the zephyr. </p><p> </p><p>“No!” A voice snapped Vader out of his musings, and he tilted his head up to meet the outspoken rebel. The rebel was trembling even with his hands fastened around the blaster’s trigger, and his face was dripping with sweat, contorting his maddening expression of pusillanimity into just a swirl of anxious flesh, “I’ll never surrender! I’ll never..never join <em>you</em>! You can go and <em>kriff</em> yourself!”<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Well then. </p><p> </p><p>“Wrong answer,” the darklord growled, and the rebel stared in wide-eyed horror as he began to gravitate towards Vader, squirming and swinging his legs as the twisted expression on his perspiration-rained face melted into complete fear, gawking, yelping and shrilly. Vader lifted the man, trapping him in his signature choke-hold, relishing in the sheer terror radiating off the rebel in large waves, trickling, sweating and exuding into the dark side of the Force which was clasping tighter. Yet still the unfortunate rebel kicked, his legs pedaling mid-air, weaker with each exerted effort of movement. Behind them, his remaining comrades could only stare as Vader squeezed the breath out of their own friend. </p><p> </p><p><em>"He can't do that! Shoot him..or something!"</em>  It wasn't until someone spoke up that he heard the frantic click of blaster rifles again, red bombardments coming against him from a single direction. A fatal error. Not loosening his grip in the Force around the man's neck, he casually lifted his free hand, and instantly the blaster bolts, much too similar to his lightsaber, bounced off, penetrating through the last of the rebels one by one. More screaming ensued as well as the rise in fear as men were hurled into the serrated walls of the opposing, crescent plateau like mere rocks, breaking apart just as one as well as they tumbled into their sandy graves.</p><p> </p><p>"Oh, kriff," one man muttered, blood almost dramatically oozing out of his mouth in a ridiculous amount, spatting it onto the ground before he collapsed, groaning faintly as his equally insignificant presence in the Force simply vanished. Black blaster rifles were strewn all across the hot desert, now owner-less and toy-like under Vader's gaze. </p><p> </p><p>To a Jedi, that would have been disconcerting - the bright dot of life in a galaxy of many like its own snuffed out without so much of a noise. However, Vader was no Jedi. He was a Sith, another wrangled, walking corpse of duratseel and inhuman rage that walked the galaxy and would still for the years to come. He turned his attention back to the struggling rebel in his force hold. </p><p> </p><p><em>Tighter</em>, the voices whispered,<em> tighter!</em></p><p> </p><p>There was a crack, a strange sound to be sure given how loud it was in the war zone, but it had crept out of the rebel's throat. </p><p> </p><p>Vader released the rebel, his gaze trailing after the fall of yet another nameless man. </p><p><br/>
<br/>
The battlefield had fallen into a silence thick as the clouds of Bespin, with only the winds of the planet lashing at his suit, curling the edges of his cape. Beneath the death mask, Vader frowned, assessing his surroundings through the red, bug-eyed lenses, his fists clutching tighter still by a subconscious, restless volition - was that it? The Force has allowed him to glimpse, to feel a smidgen of something peculiar about this rebellion on <em>this </em>planet, but after all was said and done he had found nothing of particular interest nor prominence. <br/>
<br/>
</p><p><br/>
There was just...a lot of sand and stones. </p><p> </p><p><em>I don’t like sand...it’s coarse, its rough, it’s irritating, and it gets everywhere...</em> </p><p> </p><p>“No,” he rejected that sudden memory which he did <em>not</em> call up, sinking one of his hands into his other palm like a claw, “<em>No</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>Now, he was alone again. He scoffed at the pathetic rebels who were very much dead on the ground, wondering if he should call for his TIE to return to the Executor. After all, everything was pretty much done - the mutiny was halted and slaughtered either way, and his work here had been successful....yet he could not find himself summoning one of his many admirals at the very second, paralysed by some unknown throe and expectation creeping up his shields like lichen on rocks. Something is..about to happen, the Force murmured to him, and Vader wondered if he had truly massacred everyone or if the rebels had managed to reel in their backup after all. <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>The winds stilled, and with the subside of its loose whistles came a clink.</p><p> </p><p>“Show yourself,” Vader spun around at the noise, the Force precise and tell-tale, zeroing in on a fall pile of X-wing parts compiling of blasted off, black-chewed, rectangular panels with charred turrets, pinions and other intricate junk alike which had gathered after he cut off all means of the rebels’ escape. Perhaps he was wrong: his mission was incomplete as there was one more fool left to desecrate. <br/>
<br/>
</p><p><br/>
“I see. You hid away while I slaughtered your comrades, thinking I wouldn’t notice..that you could escape <em>me</em>.”</p><p><br/>
<em><br/>
I am no man-</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The pile of jet junk rustled some more, and he surged forward as a cog rolled off the backside of a wing, vanishing into a depression of sand behind him. <br/>
<br/>
</p><p><br/>
“It is unwise of you to attempt to run away now. You will suffer the same doom for your cowardice.”</p><p> </p><p><em>-I am no child</em>-</p><p> </p><p>“Come out, I say-” the respirator wheezed an exhale, and just as the Force rippled with the low-hum and pressure to cripple the scattered pile of previously imploded rubbish, tightening through the grip of his leathered fist like a whip, the frantic fissle stopped all at once, and the loose parts of metals stopped jingling. <br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <em><br/>
—I do not want. <br/>
<br/>
</em>
</p><p><br/>
“W-Wait!” <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Vader paused. <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>The voice a child..... He shielded himself, unsure if it was a trick out of paranoia or some other beastly Force tricks. <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Then, from the brick pile of parts, a bright blonde boy popped out, almost comically on Vader’s part once again had it not been the sheer absurdity of the circumstance. He scrutinised the child; he who had golden, sun-shone hair that would make strands of actual gold dull in comparison, wide eyes the colour and clarity of an ocean, wrapped and buckled with a white robe not unlike the same one his younger self wore before the Jedi had found him. The boy scrambled, the parts jingling and parting around him like obscure, malleable rocks, eventually clambering out of a low stoop of sand caving into the scrap pile like an overly naive Krayt dragon youngling.</p><p> </p><p>The sands shifted, invisible under the glare of the sun, but Vader could see them more clearly now, including the details of the boy’s hair. He dipped his metaphorical hand through the clear, watery mirror of the Force, feeling it surge through his physical being like a gentle stream unlike the usual pin-prick doses that charged him mad with adrenaline and acridity. How..<em>curious? </em>The Force hummed with amusement of its own, and it seemed to shove at him like a persuasive breeze, twisting like a defying torrent around his essence in the belt of the Force itself like a low-tide wave, the giggle of sirens carried over. <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
The Force was...enthusiastic..?</p><p> </p><p>...<em>very</em> peculiar. Never had it swirled and danced as it did now since—</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Something wonderful has happened. Ani, I’m–</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Oh no. <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Oh no, no no no no no NO <em>NO <b>NO!</b></em><b></b></p><p> </p><p>It couldn’t...? Could it....? His Master has informed him that in his anger, he killed <em>her. She </em>had died. But the Force sang, rising to a crescendo, swashing and brushing against his black armour with ironic, uncontainable excitement that sparked and shattered the mental shields which he had put together so intricately, delicately infused with bits of chromium, seethe-steeling hatred into a billion star shards, casting them to the accursed ripples of the uncharacteristic Force which swallowed them greedily and almost cheekily, exactly like a child stealing something of grave, damning importance to a distressed adult and then dangling said item of significance over an endless aperture. </p><p> </p><p><em>This boy, </em>the Dark Side of the Force attempted to one-up the one rolling in from the Light, snapping its trillion, invisible but palpable jaws and teeth at the stranger, a shaken nest of crawling chaos and unnecessary hostility to mask the familiar wisp of pale fear beneath, <em>what’s so special about him? Tell me! He’s just a boy! A boy who very likely conspires with the Rebel Alliance! We need to kill him. Kill him as we did at the Jedi Temple years ago. We must destroy all in our path to complete our mission! <br/>
<br/>
</em></p><p>But the Light side of the Force thrived and thrummed, momentarily flushing out the darkness he had been so accustomed to, and never had the warlord of the Sith felt such nauseating drowsiness and confusion that was truly, utterly pathetic. It was unexpected. The tall menace of a man grounded his teeth together in order to hold onto the bleak part of the Force, to the one known as Darth Vader, trying his best, with all that electrocuting training and pain and loss to suppress and erase, scrub, or vainly smudge the faint but resurfacing presence of the weakling named Anakin Skywalker.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p><em>We could keep it a secret, </em>Anakin whispered, barely there, but very much alive, and Vader almost crushed his helmet in an effort to lock out the smile that followed, and drifting, shadowed faces of the former but grinning Skywalker plagued him all at once, and Vader realised the Force was displeased-</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Stop. <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</b>
</p><p>And all at once, the Force died to a quiet hush, but it nudged silently still, persistent. <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>One thing at a time. One thing at a time.. one thing at a time. <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>As if to assure Vader was not lost in another horrible meditation in the bacta tank episode, the Dark Side of the Force begrudgingly took its place beside the warlord again, grumbling like a storm, lightening and destruction achievable within a finger’s command. </p><p> </p><p>Then, Vader kept still, allowing his wrangle of emotions to melt away as he listened keenly to his respirator, anchoring his mind back into the plane of reality. After the green light of calmness was affirmed, he ignited his saber, striding and looming over the stranger boy with a tight, sun-felt aura of malice, boarding his mind up again with the somehow weakened shields. He would not falter. He would not tremble. That..temporary slip-up would not reoccur. He annotated to consult his Master back on Coruscant concerning his internal buzz of conflict, of <em>feelings, </em>such feeble, trivial things. He would. He must. </p><p> </p><p>”Where are your parents, <em>child</em>?” Force, he practically boomed, and he drank in with forceful glee at the sight of the child flinching at the vocoders tone. The darkness swelled, tearing before reconstructing itself in an insane, splicing ripple, twisted intentions bubbling to the surface as it resisted the tiny mutiny of the Light for a second. The fear, both from Vader and the darkness itself has shrunk magnificently. Yes. This was good. No faltering. Absolute not. </p><p> </p><p>Quickly recovering from the strange, tall man’s harsh tone, however, the boy twisted his short, pudgy neck up at Vader, a face of surprising neutrality, and the Sith found himself peering into the sky-blue eyes, not unfair to be paralleled to that feeling of the Force when it wasn’t a clashing, battering sea around him, “I’m not sure, actually.”</p><p><br/>
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Vader cautiously reached into the youngling’s painfully open mind, probing it. <br/>
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</p><p>
  <em>This guy is weird. He keeps staring at me for some reason. Maybe he can’t see very well. I wish I was taller, tall like him, maybe, then he can look at me without staring so much and it’ll be easier. I think. Also, I haven’t eaten anything since I snuck into that ship the group of really nervous guys with guns called rebels and I didn’t think they saw me but oh no I think they’re all dead because this guy is evil and mean—<br/>
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</p><p>Somewhere, the Light Side of the Force was laughing at his dumbfounded face. He was sure of it. </p><p> </p><p>“Your name. What is your name?” Vader snarled, just as displeased with the sudden comeback of the Light Side of the Force which has been triggered by this..boy. This child.</p><p> </p><p>“Luke,” the boy replied softly, a friendly sun-warmed contrast to Vader’s cold aggression, “Luke Lars, but my real family name is <em>Skywalker</em>, I think. My uncle and aunt never told me much, except that my dad was a <em>spice freighter.</em>” Luke evidently struggled to get the last phrase out. Such unfamiliar words. Such strange people and words. This strange, sandy world that reeked of Tatooine, but had none of its binary sunset charms to the boy. <br/>
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</p><p>Pausing for a bit but adding as an afterthought before Vader could interrupt, “His name was Anakin Skywalker.”</p><p> </p><p>The Force, both dark and of the light, shrieked, though both out of very different reasons, and the river of life itself exploded into a geyser of panic, spluttering, fumbling and collapsing onto itself like a lung, atoms and fragments of space wheezing and loosing their flicker of the sheer will to continue to exist the same way Vader did when his suit malfunctioned somewhere. He was half-certain it was malfunctioning <em>now, </em>given the pressure of the revelation and the two, disparate forces gnashing and biting at him to <em>act, </em>to say something to retain one or another aspect of himself, be it Darth Vader or the allegedly deceased Anakin Skywalker. The seas of life churned, dragging his mind down. <br/>
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</p><p>He had a son, and his son was called Luke Skywalker. </p><p> </p><p>Vader, slowed with the new wave of information of <em>everything, </em>tilted down to wonder if the boy- if <em>Luke</em> was staring at him with a guarded expression of childish disgust or fear. Instead, the expression of tranquility remained, the one only a confused but genuine child could carry. Luke returned Vader’s stare with a frown, but not unkind<em>, </em>“Are you okay, mister? You’re acting <em>funny</em>.” </p><p><br/>
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“...I am fine. Come with me, child.”</p><p> </p><p>Luke cocked his head to the side, “But you’re the bad guy. The weird nervous guys were screaming but you..you <em>hurt</em> them.”<br/>
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</p><p>“Nonsense. You are going to return to the Executor by my side regardless of what you think or want. My say in this is final...Luke, and I will ensure you are fed and nourished, provided with the best Imperial comforts as long as you remain,” the Dark Side had accepted the fact that the boy was indeed Anakin Skywalker’s offspring, and Vader felt it fold and morph into something strange - still a dark, seething cloak of malice and rage, with a lurking, infatuated protectiveness weaved between its obsidian material, something which Vader was sure was unseen nor unheard by any previous Siths.</p><p> </p><p>It <em>crooned</em> and combed itself oddly, purring like a calculating beast, gibbous in its den. The change was...unnerving and unexpected of it. According to his Master, even the Dark Side of the Force could be bent and shaped by its wielder, thus granting each Sith a diverse, complex signature ability (such as how Vader’s was the force-choke) despite operating on the rotating shelf of negative feelings as catalysts. Vader had learned of legends concerning previous lords of the Dark Side whose abilities greatly exceeded his own, such as Darth Plagueis who could manipulate <em>midichlorians</em> and prevent the death of his loved ones, or some other too ancient, overly vague embodiment of the Force itself that even consumed entire worlds to satisfy the thirst and price of the Dark Side. <br/>
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</p><p>Vader filed those thoughts for further cogitation later on. </p><p> </p><p>Now, the Light hummed with resigned contentment before it was overpowered by the tide of abyssal, smothering blackness that began to taint the Force once more, but stronger this time, and Vader’s own mental shields sheened with a cruel, renewed spite that was almost...<em>methodical</em>. <br/>
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</p><p>“Are you going to make me a bad guy too?” Luke, thankfully, did not sense the drastic change of energy within the machine-man, and merely furthered his own curiosity of this weird stranger who asked him somewhat personal questions and then even offered him a myriad of luxuries, “Please don’t make me a bad guy. I don’t wanna be a bad guy. I don’t wanna hurt people.” </p><p> </p><p>“Foolish child,” Vader chastised, having regained his footing and mental state, “You will learn that there is more to just people of black and white in this world. That monochrome mentality is the way this nightmare started. I am not the ‘bad guy’ you think nor claim I am, young one.”</p><p> </p><p>Luke seemed to consider this, still frowning, and Vader tried not to wince at the child’s pure, cerulean gaze, “So..I have to <em>hurt</em> people?”</p><p><br/>
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Vader found himself lost on the intense, almost burning gaze of his own child, this little serendipity which he would have easily missed and never found out for who knows how many decades more to come, or even ever. <em>No</em>, Vader decided abruptly, which was very unlike him considering he was a renewed man of plans (unlike his very much <em>dead</em>, former self), <em>no, </em>he would hide Luke’s presence from his <em>Master</em>, from the Emperor under that same new cloak of swirling, purring darkness. The darkness would blanket and fort the child. <em>His </em>child. It would.</p><p> </p><p>It would, <em>and</em>, Vader thought almost with another uncharacteristic feature which was a grin, if <em>anyone</em> or <em>anything</em> came between it and and his offspring, he would annihilate it and launch it to Mustafar’s lava pits and back whatever or <em>whoever</em> it was. The darkness around the Sith hissed with excitement at the notion, delighted to have its child in its metaphorical clawed hold, the only beacon of life in its nest of fear and dead men. </p><p> </p><p>For when the gentle flowers no longer grew in his garden of Hell, he would have to take this desert rose instead. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Imagine being a good writer - can't relate.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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